Cathy Hopkins - [Mates, Dates 04] (11 page)

My
Fair Lady. Not

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‘You’ll never do it,’
I said, beginning to feel desperate. ‘It’s hopeless. I am Ugly Git from
Uglygitland.’

‘Roma wasna builta in
a day,’ said Nesta, tugging her way through my hair.

‘The darkest hour is
just before dawn,’ said Lucy, who was kneeling on the floor next to me,
retouching my nails.

‘Suppose,’ I said,
looking gloomily at my reflection in the mirror in Nesta’s bedroom. My hair was
a frizzy mess, I had an aloe vera face mask on that made me look like a ghost
and a big spot threatening to erupt on my chin.

‘Lack of self-esteem,’
said Izzie. ‘That’s your problem, TJ. You are a babe, but you don’t know it.
Look, you have fabulous hair that you always scrape back in a plait, long
long
legs that you never show, a fab figure that you hide in baggy tracksuits and a
great mouth that all those thin-lipped models who have collagen injections
would die for.’

Always one to accept
compliments graciously, I said, ‘Humphh. And you clearly have the observational
skills of a brain-dead gnat.’

We’d already done the
‘before’ shot in the morning at Lucy’s house. Steve had offered to be
photographer with his new camera and it was hysterical. I’d worn the ‘dress
from hell’ that Mum had bought me and Izzie had done my hair in two bunches
high on either side of my head. Lucy had stuck dog hair from Ben and Jerry’s
brush on to my legs with Evostick so that I’d look like I had hairy legs (I put
my foot down when she got carried away and tried to stick some on my upper lip
to give me a moustache though.) And Nesta had given me some lessons in bad
posture so I looked even more frumpy.

‘All beautiful women
have great posture,’ she’d said. ‘It’s one of the first things they teach at
modelling school. To stand up straight. So for these shots, stoop, like you
have round shoulders.’

Lucy raided her mum’s
jumble sale bargain bags and produced some seriously tasteless jewellery. Big
dangly earrings and an Indian necklace.

‘But they don’t go
with the dress,’ I’d said.

The girls had looked
at me as if I was stupid.

‘And the object of
this exercise
is
?
said
Nesta.

By the time they’d
finished, I looked like a sack of old potatoes. With hairy legs.

‘You look awful,’
Steve’d said approvingly when I came down the stairs, then walked across the
hallway like a duck. A round-shouldered duck.

‘Yeah, like Waynetta
Slob from Harry Enfield’s show,’ laughed Lai.

‘I want to do the
shots round the back garden near the bins,’ said Steve.

‘What, like I’m on the
scrap heap?’ I asked.

Steve gave me a look
as if to say ‘yeah’, then he grinned. ‘You don’t look that bad,’ he said. ‘It’s
only that dress that makes you look like a frump.’

‘But the bins in the
background give a sort of subliminal message, like I’m a load of rubbish,’ I
said.

‘Yeah,’ said Steve.
‘Exactly. We’ve been doing it in film class, all about how surrounding images
register with the subconscious and can reinforce what you’re trying to say
without people realising.’

‘What are you on
about?’ said Lucy. She did an enormous yawn as though bored out of her mind,
but I found what he was saying interesting.

We had a great laugh
as Steve clicked away and I assumed the most unattractive positions and facial expressions
I could.

At one point, Mr and
Mrs Levering came out to see what we were up to. They watched for a moment as I
cavorted for the camera doing my sumo-wrestler position, then a bit of karate
chopping. They looked very puzzled to hear Steve say in a French accent, ‘And
look as miserable as you can. Like your durg ’as just died and gone to durgee
‘eaven
avec les autres chiens
. That’s it.
Eh bien.
Marvelleuse
mon ooglee legume…
Diable
mon sooth, chins up, chins down.
Mais
oui, bien sur.
Degoutantamont
.’

Clearly languages were
not his thing, I thought, as his parents both shrugged and went back into the
house.

The second part of the
make-over wasn’t a laugh. Oh no-ho, not at all. The girls were taking it
seriously. As in
mega-
seriously. They were on a blooming make-over
mission.

I was plucked, waxed,
massaged, moisturised, conditioned, manicured, pedicured, blow-dried, made-up,
made-over and dressed.

‘OK, you can look
now,’ said Nesta, removing her dressing gown from the mirror where she’d draped
it so I couldn’t see.

The reflection of a
brunette Barbie doll gazed back at me. I was wearing one of Nesta’s dresses, a
short pale blue number and her mum’s Jimmy Choo grey strappy heels. Nesta had
given me ‘big’ hair, loose and flowing over my shoulders and Lucy had made up
my face with a little shadow, blusher and rusty lippie.

‘You shall go to the
ball, Cinders,’ said Nesta. ‘You look fab.’

‘Yeah, a top babe,’
said Lucy. ‘Do you like it?’

I wasn’t sure. I did
look good. And I had to admit that my legs looked really long. But I wasn’t
sure that looking like such a girlie girl was me. Mind you, I didn’t know what
was
me.

‘What do you think,
Izzie?’

‘Watch out boys,’ she
sang. ‘There’s a new kid in town.’

Nesta’s mum gave us a
lift to Hampstead High Street where we were meeting Steve to do the ‘after’
shots.

She dropped us halfway
down Heath Street and as we got out of the car, someone did a long wolf
whistle. I looked over to where it was coming from and there was Scott. He was
with a bunch of his mates sitting at a table outside Cafe Nero.

TJ Watts.
Cor
bloody cor,‘ he said, as he looked me up and down and then up and down again,
his eyes finally resting on my legs. ‘You’re
girl
.‘

‘
Uhyuh
,’ I
said, as I noticed all the other boys round the table also oggling me. I felt
exposed standing there in my shorter than short dress and I wasn’t sure I liked
the attention I was getting. Everyone was staring and there was nowhere to
hide. Even an old bloke in his forties was gawping as he went by. Served him
right, I thought, when he walked smack into a woman with her dog and got all
tangled up in the lead.

Scott took my hand and
introduced us to his friends. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. Then
he was all over Nesta and acting like he’d known her for ever. All his mates
sniggered when she dismissed him saying, ‘In your dreams’.

He didn’t seem to mind
though. In fact, I think he took it as a come-on.

Lucy spotted Steve
coming down the street and waved. He waved back and, when he saw me, he did a
slow whistle under his breath.

‘See they’ve done a
number,’ he said.

‘Wow,’ I said to Izzie
as we walked or rather they walked and I tottered. ‘Is it really this simple? A
bit of lippie, high heels, show your legs and boys turn to jelloid?’

Izzie nodded. ‘And
even more so if you show a bit of cleavage. It’s amazing to watch. Hysterical.
You see boys’ cheekbones twitching with the effort not to look at your chestie
bits, but their eyes keep zinging back there as if pulled by an invisible
magnet.’

‘Not a problem I
have,’ said Lucy, ‘being a 32 triple A myself.’

‘Lucy’s bros call her
Nancy-No-Tits,’ confided Nesta.

‘We can’t all be Dolly
Parton like you,’ laughed Lucy, punching her arm.

We went down to the
bottom of Heath Street with Scott and his mates trailing after us and sat at a
table outside House on the Hill. Nesta ordered drinks and Steve took some shots
as he said he wanted them to look natural rather than posed. This time I didn’t
have to do much, he did all work. He was much quieter this time, not acting as
loony mad as he had been in the morning. He wasn’t as much fun. In fact, he
seemed to want to get it over with, as though he’d lost interest.

‘Why did you choose
Hampstead for the “after” shots?’ I asked, in an attempt to get him talking.

‘Trendy place. It’s
glam. Rich,’ he said, then he clamped up again.

He didn’t hang around
after he’d got his photos and muttered something about having to get back to
finish homework.

Something had clearly
upset him since this morning. He was really subdued. I must ask Lucy if she
knows.